A big thanks to everyone who’s helped to spread the word, and of course special thanks to those who’ve made a contribution. If you haven’t logged in yet, please do and try out the more interactive elements, such as the groups. And of course leave your comments, especially the nice ones.

A very early start, and the slightly early birth of a child meant that there were only five takers for this dive. Light winds and a relatively calm sea gave us the chance to dive a wreck that none of the five of us had dived before. The early start was to avoid mid-tide but in the end there was very little current. The smaller of the two club boats, the Humber, was large enough, but I began to doubt this when we started to load all the gear for two dives into the bow. Fortunately the load was evened out when we put Jim’s lunch down at the stern end.
The stern and midships section of the Sloop HMS Mignonette lies in 35 meters near Galley Head Co Cork. It is about a nine mile spin from Union Hall. She was a small warship and is quite broken up. The bow section is so far away from the stern that it is a separate dive. The stern and midships part of the wreck is just about big enough to cover in about 25 minutes, which is what you will get using a 30% mix. Being a small wreck the shot has to be dropped more exactly, but the boilers show up well on the sounder. The GPS co-ordinates we used dropped the shot a little to the west of the boiler but having seen that this was the case from the sounder we finned a few meters east to find the wreck.

She struck a mine on St Patrick’s day 1917 and sank. The mine had been laid by a U-Boat. There was either no loss of life, or casualties not known. Five days earlier the Mignonette had helped rescue the crew of SS Malmanger that had also struck a mine. The day after, the 18th, another minesweeper: Alyssum went down 1½ miles further offshore. The wreck has lots of small barrell shaped objects with rounded ends that we assumed to be munitions, shells for the gun. We had been warned that some of these contain phosphorus so not to disturb them. There is no big gun aboard, that was salvaged some time ago and taken to Kinsale. We failed to find the Prop. But there was lots of stuff to see. The Great War flower class sloops were mainly used as minesweepers and were built with an old engine design, and as a result were slow, but they were not intended to escort convoys or catch the enemy, so slow was not a problem. They had a triple hull, and obviously this didn’t save the Mignonette, but maybe it helped save the crew. She had two boilers, and two funnels, but only a single propellor. To be honest I only saw one boiler, but others saw both. There is an engine and what seems to be an electrical generator.

It is dark at that depth, and the light was a little green from plankton, but on the wreck viz was reasonably clear. The seabed was rocky and flat with a little seaweed. There were plenty of small fish on the wreck. Wildlife included Cuckoo Wrasse, Pouting, and conger.

We left from Union Hall, and lunched at red strand. We brought second bottles for a dive on the “Norwegian” that did not work out as a wreck dive but was a pleasant scenic dive.

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Saturday morning was bright and sunny. And crisp, definitely crisp. Not a day for climbing back into a wet semi-dry, so I just did the one from Dooneen Pier. I went first, while Fiona looked after Diarmaid. I swam around the small rock south of the pier and headed west towards the rocky bay. The tide was too low to swim through, but there was a nice little cave in the cliff face just to the left of the channel. When it came to Fiona’s turn the water was high enough to get through and she enjoyed her snorkel on the south side of the island.

Today was slightly less inviting, but I still managed to drag myself into the water. Headed left this time, into the cave and explored the bay beyond that and around the corner. Nice spot for doing a few duck dives – the water was pretty clear and I could see the bottom a few metres below; a nice mix of boulders and flat white sand.

Staying down for a third night so I might get my quota of snorkels out of the way. We’ll see what tomorrow’s like. Tapping this in slowly on my Hero in front of the warm fire. BTW, anybody looking at this on their mobile? Let me know what you think of the new mobile theme.

Cork Sub Aqua will hold an open night upstairs in Counihan’s Bar on 21st January. Members will be present to discuss our training plans for the year to come and answer any questions you may have concerning diving in Cork, conditions, training needs, club equipment, costs, or any other matters relating to diving.

Divers with existing diving qualifications are particularly welcome, as we will be doing crossover training early in the new year. If you have not dived before, please register your interest as soon as possible, because we will only be able to provide training for new divers if numbers justify it.

If you made an enquiry during the year about joining the club you should be contacted soon with more details. Enquiries can get overlooked sometimes though, so don’t hesitate to get in touch again.

Hope to see you there.

I hadn’t dived the Folia for several years, not because club dives on the Folia are especially rare, (there had been a few already in 2009), but because I just happened to be unavailable whenever one was arranged. So I was looking forward to this. My recollection was that the wreck is really quite impressive. She lies at a depth of 33 to 38 meters several miles off Ardmore Co Waterford, and is within sight of Youghal and Ardmore. Despite some imperfect visibility it was a very enjoyable dive.
The problem of photographing and describing a wreck the size of the Folia is a bit like describing and photographing the grand canyon. It is difficult to convey the impressive scale of a wreck in a series of photographs or words, especially if conditions on the dive were not especially favorable for photography. I would like to dive the wreck again with clearer viz, like I had the previous time I dived, and a fast wide lens. The Folia is one of those dives that people like to do many times because it is probably one of the largest wrecks at a non-decompression diving depth off the south coast. There is always something new to discover. OK the Kowloon Bridge was an order of magnitude larger, but since the bow section collapsed also an order of magnitude less fascinating.

Sometimes known as the Folio, her real name was Folia. Militarily speaking the U-Boat that sank her did a pretty good job by preventing a large cargo of artillery shell casings from reaching the Western Front. The deaths of seven of the crew was the sad price paid. Despite extensive salvage that has destroyed much of the superstructure aft of the boilers there are still many of the shell casings to be found. We saw evidence that salvage continues. In effect she is being turned into a habitat for marine life. There are lots of nooks and crannies on the wreck. This is a good place to see congers. As a consequence of being a cozy home for fish, it gets some anglers, so watch out for hooks and fishing line.

I used a 28% mix, and we had about a 20 minute bottom time with plenty of no-decompression limit to spare, partly due to a miscalculation on my part, we headed back to the shotline a tad early. Launching from Knockadoon was OK, but there were waves coming around the point which made retrieval a bit challenging. Thanks to Brian for towing and coxing, and to Helen for organizing the dive, also Joost for helping us drop the shotline on the correct spot.

For those interested in the history of the wreck there is an article on the Waterford County Museum webpage: http://www.waterfordcountymuseum.org/exhibit/web/Display/article/160/4/?lang=en

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There will a raffles with prizes,

a first prize of €120 for the quiz winner.

€20 per table to enter, Teams of four.

Tables of 4  will be teamed up on the night if required.

Should be a laugh, see you there, friends & family and random punters welcome.

Any takers?

…you can tag your photos in a batch from the Organizr . E.g. select a group or set from the drop-down menu on the bottom left, and drag them into the main window, then select ‘AddTags’ from the menu at the top.

You can even tag other people’s photos for them. I’ve added photos from Joe and Donal here to illustrate.